Is your call center feeling sluggish or slipping on important metrics? For instance, the global metric for call wrap-up time is six minutes. Do you find things are just taking longer than expected? Or not getting done at all? It’s possible that there are pesky time wasters living in the call center, quietly dragging operations down. These issues usually don’t happen overnight, they exist for months, if not years without making a sound, and suddenly things are moving at a snail’s pace. So, what’s plaguing your call center’s productivity and what can be done to eliminate them? We explore common trends that limit efficiency and their corresponding resolutions…
Tag Archives: agent-productivity
It’s a six-letter word that most doctors tell their patients to beware of, or they could face serious health conditions down the road. It’s something we all struggle to cope with everyday but it’s ranked significantly higher for contact center agents. Have any guesses? Yes, it’s called s-t-r-e-s-s or better known as “agent burnout” in contact center terms. Of course stress or burnout can be found in any job but according to U.S. News Careers, customer service representatives suffer from above average stress levels and below average job flexibility, which is cause for concern. Healthy workers are better workers, so it’s important to do whatever you can to help curb stress levels and boost agent morale in your contact center.
We explore a few ways to make your contact center a less harmful working environment for all: Continue reading
When a customer phones your contact center and engages with your agents, do you know what their experience is like? All too often, agents, disengaged from their jobs, don’t put their best foot forward.
Lack of engagement costs the U.S. economy $350 billion annually. Not only is this an enormous loss in productivity, it’s also the root cause of employee churn. Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave an organization than the disengaged. Could gamification be the solution we’ve all been waiting for?
Take a look at these 6 amazing statistics on the use of gamification and, while you’re here, register for next week’s LIVE panel discussion that will address the topic of gamification in more depth. Continue reading
According to Aberdeen, contact center agents spent 25% of their time idle – paid time where they’re not interacting with customers or engaging in training activities.
Idle time is, of course, a necessary part of most jobs – making employees productive 100% of the time is a sure-fire way to burn them out early and increase your turnover rates. However, a high rate of idle time should be looked at as an indicator that something’s wrong in your organization: It’s the mark of lower productivity and higher staffing costs.
What can you do about it? Continue reading
The answer is simple: it all boils down to performance and the effect it has on the customer experience. There are three things we can all agree with when it comes to phoning a contact center:
- Callers don’t like to be on hold
- Agents don’t enjoy talking to callers who have been on hold
- No call center wants to have long hold times
In a perfect world, your organization would always have enough agents to handle the number of incoming calls. However, this isn’t realistic in a typical call center. Spikes in call volume can and do occur, and the end result is a poor customer service experience. This is something that all service organizations should avoid, particularly since 35% of customers will stop doing business with a company after a poor experience. Continue reading
Most organizations, regardless of size and sector, recognize that customer satisfaction is a priority. Effective call center solutions have become key elements in differentiating a competitive business strategy from one which focuses on a customer centricity model. Over 60% of a company’s costs are found in the call center workforce and over 90% of customers will not choose your company if they were unsatisfied with the service.
Customer service is the most important part of a business because it needs to balance internal costs with tangible results. Therefore, it should be the most important topic on a company’s agenda. If we’re talking about the reduction of customer service costs, than one should take into account 6 important tips:
